Romney Pitches Broader Message to Voters Before Debates

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has campaigned since February on a proposal to cut income tax rates across the board by 20 percent, arguing that doing so would help create jobs by allowing employers to keep and invest more of what they earn. Photographer: Peter Foley/Bloomberg

Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Mitt Romney, who a top aide predicted
months ago would get an Etch A Sketch clean slate for the
general election, is broadening his message and moderating his
tone to reach out to swing voters in the run-up to the first in
a series of presidential debates this month.

The Republican presidential nominee spent much of the year
stressing his support of tax cuts for all, self-deportation of
illegal immigrants and the undoing of President Barack Obama’s
health-care law. Now, he’s highlighting a recast message as he
seeks votes from middle-income earners, Hispanics, women and
fence-sitters of all backgrounds.

Romney’s campaign wants to sway undecided voters and those
who back Obama yet harbor reservations about him.

“This is a very close race,” Kevin Madden, a campaign
adviser, told reporters on a conference call today, adding that
the campaign would also be reaching out to “a number of voters
out there that may be registering some measure of support” for
Obama “that’s very soft.”

“The reason that these voters right now are undecided is
that they’ve watched President Obama for the last four years,
and they haven’t concluded he’s worthy of their support right
now,” Madden said. In the coming weeks, he added, the campaign
will “lay out the important choice that these voters face on
these big issues that they care about.”

Resetting Race

It’s the culmination of a process that top Romney
strategist Eric Fehrnstrom foreshadowed earlier this year as the
former Massachusetts governor pushed to clinch his party’s
nomination. Fehrnstrom said in a March 21 CNN interview that
Romney could reset the race in the fall, like the Etch A Sketch
child’s toy for making drawings and quickly erasing them with a
shake.

Since then, Romney hasn’t reversed any of his positions, as
his Republican primary rivals and Democrats who branded him a
“flip-flopper” said he would. Yet as he readies for the Oct. 3
debate against Obama, he’s stressing elements of his agenda that
might appeal to a broader swath of voters.

The tax-cut issue offers one example. Romney has campaigned
since February on a proposal to reduce income-tax rates across
the board by 20 percent, arguing that doing so would help create
jobs by allowing employers to keep and invest more of what they
earn. Lately, he has highlighted the benefits of the plan for
middle-income people and emphasized that he isn’t looking to
hand more tax cuts to the wealthy.

Middle-Income

“There should be no tax reduction for high-income
people,” he said Sept. 24 on the CBS program “60 Minutes.”
“What I would like to do is to get a tax reduction for middle-income families.”

Romney went further as he campaigned Sept. 26 in
Westerville, Ohio, saying that no one should anticipate a
substantial tax reduction, because his plan would be financed by
curbing or eliminating targeted tax breaks.

“By the way, don’t be expecting a huge cut in taxes,
because I’m also going to lower deductions and exemptions,” he
told voters in a gym at Westerville South High School.

Two days later in Philadelphia, Romney told donors that
while everyone would benefit from his tax plan, the wealthy
would sacrifice more to pay for it.

Marginal Rates

“My view is to lower the marginal rates, get marginal
rates down for everybody,” Romney said at a fundraiser at the
Union League Club, where contributors giving as much as $50,000
munched on a breakfast buffet. “At the same time, lower
deductions and exemptions, particularly for people at the high
end, so we keep the current progressivity of the code.”

Romney and campaign aides have said his tax plan would be
revenue-neutral -- any reductions in money coming in to the U.S.
Treasury would be offset by corresponding increases elsewhere --
and that the middle class and small businesses will get a net
tax cut. Yet they won’t answer who would shoulder a net increase
to finance it.

The shift in emphasis comes as Romney trails Obama in
public polls both nationally and in states that have supported
candidates from both parties, and may reflect what surveys show
is opposition to cutting taxes for top earners.

While some of Romney’s aides have signaled they will retool
their message for the closing weeks of the race to clarify the
choice for voters, there’s little evidence of major changes.

‘One Umbrella’

Romney’s messages “all fit under one umbrella,” senior
adviser Ed Gillespie told reporters on the call today. “We
cannot afford four more years like the last four years.”

Still, the former Massachusetts governor, who has mostly
steered clear of foreign policy, does plan to speak more about
the topic in the coming days, particularly sharpening his
attacks on Obama’s policy in the Middle East.

The president is “leading from behind and reacting to
events in the Middle East and North Africa, rather than shaping
them,” Madden said. “Governor Romney will lay out a stronger
vision for American foreign policy, based on the strong
leadership that we need to shape events and protect American
interests.”

Romney is ready for debate questions about his branding of
47 percent of Americans as government-dependent “victims” who
pay no income tax and won’t vote for him, Gillespie said.

“We believe the voters will see and appreciate the fact
that what Governor Romney’s talking about would improve the
quality of life for 100 percent of Americans,” Gillespie said.

Romney and Obama, after debating on Oct. 3 in Colorado at
the University of Denver, will face off on Oct. 16 at Hofstra
University in Hempstead, New York, and on Oct. 22 at Lynn
University in Boca Raton, Florida. Each debate begins at 9 p.m.
Washington time.

‘Retarget’ Message

The recalibration of Romney’s campaign has intensified
since the secretly recorded May remarks were published last
month.

“Romney, like most nominees, has attempted to retarget his
message toward the political center, and that has accelerated
ever since the ‘47 percent’ comments surfaced,” said Dan
Schnur, who worked on Arizona Senator John McCain’s 2000
Republican presidential bid and directs the Jesse Unruh
Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.

While Obama, who faced no primary opposition, has had all
year to move to the middle, Romney “has five weeks and three
debates to talk to the center of the electorate,” Schnur said.

Health-Care Law

Romney is also altering his tone on another issue on which
polling shows him to be out of step with public opinion. A
Bloomberg National poll conducted Sept. 21-24 found that only
about a third believe the 2010 health-care law Obama pressed to
enactment should be repealed, as Romney promised during the
Republican primaries, while a majority said it should be
retained. Two in five said the measure “may need small
modifications,” and another one in five said it should be
“left alone.”

While Romney often says in interviews and campaign
appearances that he will repeal the law, he has recently begun
speaking more about parts of it he would keep and mentioning the
Massachusetts measure that mirrors its approach and that, as the
state’s governor, he helped enact in 2006.

In a Sept. 9 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Romney
said he isn’t proposing “getting rid of all health reform.”

“There are a number of things that I like in health-care
reform that I’m going to put in place,” he said. “One is to
make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get
coverage.”

What he didn’t say is that the health-care proposal he
offered in his presidential campaign guarantees such coverage
only for those who have obtained insurance policies in the past.

Massachusetts Plan

Romney last week held out the Massachusetts health-care law
-- which, like the national measure, requires that everyone
purchase health insurance -- as proof that he cares about
people.

“Don’t forget, I got everybody in my state insured,”
Romney told NBC in a Sept. 26 interview. “One hundred percent
of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don’t think
there’s anything that shows more empathy and care about the
people of this country than that kind of record.”

Romney has also softened his immigration stance since the
primary campaign. In that race, he berated fellow Republicans
for proposing to allow illegal immigrants or their U.S.-raised
children any chance to stay in the U.S. and seek legal status.
At a Sept. 20 forum in Miami, sponsored by the Spanish-language
television station Univision, Romney attempted to explain his
call for “self-deportation” for illegal immigrants.

“I’m not in favor of a deportation -- mass-deportation
effort, rounding up 12 million people and taking them out of the
country,” Romney said. “People decide if they want to go back
to the country of their origin and get in line, legally, to be
able to come to this country.”

To contact the reporter on this story:
Julie Hirschfeld Davis in Boston, Massachusetts at
1890 or Jdavis159@bloomberg.net.